2. Waking up.
January 25, 2006, 7am.
Cavern somewhere in Alexandria, Egypt.
Bill was the first one to woke up. He opened his eyes slowly, a low groan escaping from his mouth, feeling his brain pulsing inside his head and a nasty headache on top of that. The headache was so strong it was making him nauseous, that's how bad he was feeling.
He rolled on the floor and tried to force his body into a sitting position, it wouldn't do to puke all over himself, but all he managed was to find himself on all fours on shaking limbs before they gave in and he fell face-first to the floor.
That's when his brain stared to work again, and he remembered, oh what he remembered! The memory merge had been successful, he could tell, since he had all the memories of his 'other self' swirling inside his mind, showing him things that hadn't happened in the other timeline.
Bill stayed in the floor for a long time assessing the new memories.
First of all he searched in his newest memories to make sure everyone was safe and sound. Once he made sure that they were he keep analyzing the other memories.
Most of it was the same, but there were lots of memories with his uncles, memories of the couple of twins -his brothers and his uncles- playing pranks in all the family meetings, how it was his uncles that helped the twins to open his business instead of Harry and other unimportant details like those.
And then he noticed the worst thing that had happen on this world, or rather what hadn't happen, he had never met Fleur. He didn't know her. Instead, he was in an on and off relationship with an old friend from Hogwarts.
He would have to do something about that...
He heard a small muffled groan coming from the inside of the cell.
He would have to do something about his love life after he got rid of Riddle.
But first he had to see how Hermione and Harry were coping.
He tried to sit down just to fell once more to the floor.
"Damn it" he muttered, just what he needed, to reach a level of magical exhaustion that it had drained even his normal energy. He couldn't even remember the last time something like that had happen, maybe when he was allowed to use magic outside school for the first time when he was seventeen, he had been so excited about it. Being in bed for a week afterwards had taught him to be more careful.
Another groan, this time coming from Hermione's place, took him from his memories, ones he had lived in both worlds.
"Oh my god, my head" she muttered moving her hand to the aforementioned part of her body, feeling her eyes filling with tears at the pain and some of the new memories.
It turns out her grandparents had died in an attack commanded by Voldemort in their original timeline, in this one they were alive and living a couple of blocks away from her parent's house.
The new timeline had a mayor flaw, though; she never got to be friends with Harry and Ron. She kept behaving the same way she had those first days in their first year, lacking a frightening experience with a troll and a dangerous adventure to bring her courage out of her and make her realize that books weren't everything in life; as a consequence she had never befriended anyone, no one that mattered at least. Right now her other self was working in an unassuming position in the ministry just going on living and behaving like an insufferable know-it-all with bad character.
Gone was her good position working at the Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures. Gone were her good friends. Gone were her awards at Hogwarts for helping save the school time and again.
Everything was gone. And she was just another bothersome muggleborn cast away by the purebloods to some obscure part of the ministry to keep doing paperwork for the rest of her life.
Well, she was having none of that. She would get everything back, starting by her best friends.
She tried to sit up to analyze her current situation and found that it was an impossible feat as of now, her body was too tired to move something that wasn't her arms or her head.
Hermione heard Bill chuckled and turned her head to the side to glare at him. "What's so funny? Can you move?" she asked and he stopped laughing.
"No, I can't, but it's funnier when you see someone else failing at it" he answered cheekily, too happy to care about her glare, he had his family back and it was just a matter of time getting Fleur back too.
Hermione snorted and nodded reluctantly, it was somewhat funny to see Bill all sprawled in the floor but not able to put himself in a more comfortable position.
"How is your life?" she asked after a while, growing bored of being in the same position without any entertainment.
"It has some changes, but nothing mayor, just more relatives alive. I've never met Fleur, though." Bill told her and she gave him a knowing look.
"I never talked to Harry or Ron. We almost don't know each other" she said sadly. "Well, I don't doubt that Harry knows me and remembers me, but we didn't grow together like before" she shook her head trying to get rid of such horrid thoughts, she would get everything back.
"Do you already know what are we going to do with him?" Bill changed the subject not so swiftly.
"We can't just kill him and be done with it, Bill" she scolded him, knowing exactly what he was thinking.
"I know, you two don't want to and won't let me do it, that's why I'm asking if you have already thought about it" he said raising an eyebrow at her, silently telling her what he thought about they refusal.
"I don't know, I suppose we could do what they did the second time and take him in" she reluctantly muttered, not to low so that he could hear.
"And who is going to take him in? Will you do it? Because I'm not doing it" Bill rebutted and when Hermione failed to answer both fell silent.
Bill managed to stand up for the first time one hour later and found himself facing a completely knocked out Harry Potter lying still on the floor and an unconscious teenager version of Tom Malvoro Riddle, who had only moved a little before falling senseless.
He sighed, briefly wondering why they couldn't just kill the damn excuse of human being and be done with it.
"Harry hasn't woken up yet" he said to Hermione as he walked towards her, just in case she hadn't noticed before.
"I think his life has too many changes for him to accept it, so he has fallen into a deeper coma to deal with it. If he doesn't wake up in an hour or so we can take him to a hospital" she proposed and took the hand Bill offered to help her stand.
"Should we move him?" Bill frowned, looking down at his friend worried about whatever that could make him react so badly to the memory merge, technically he had more years to process and yet he had woken up first.
"Wh-where am I?" Riddle demanded to know from his cell, after clearing his dry throat. Hermione and Bill turned towards him so fast they were both dizzy for a few seconds, their energy levels still low. "Who are you? What's going on?" He asked, eyes narrowing in what he must have thought to be a threatening glare.
Bill found it hard not to laugh. He had encountered Fenrir Greyback, Lord Voldemort and dozens of Death Eaters and this... this teenager thought he would be scared by a glare like that? Severus Snape's was a thousand times more frightening.
"What are we going to do with him now, Bill?" she asked, a small frown forming on her face, she hadn't thought that much ahead, concentrating mainly in making the ritual work, and not screwing up the spells cast on the cage.
"You are not actually asking me that" Bill stated, refusing to even think about it, because if he did he would only convince himself that killing the boy was the only option available.
"What are you talking about!? Who are you!?" Riddle shouted, grabbing the bars of his cell and looking around wildly, trying to find a way to escape.
Hermione Granger could be many things, but never let it be said that she was cold hearted.
"We are not going to hurt you, Tom" she told the adolescent with an almost kind –if somewhat forced- smile.
"Don't call me that, you have no right to call me by my name, you sick mudblood" the teen spat out.
The adults' eyes bugged at the words, and then they looked at each other feeling as utterly astonished as if Harry had suddenly declared that he would love to wear a dress. Had that little boy said… It couldn't be, the ritual specified that it would bring the summoned from a time where it was still innocent, not yet corrupted. How was that not corrupted?
Bill whirled around and went to a table that was near one of the walls, opening the papyrus that were there to start re-checking everything while Hermione started circling the ritual circle, looking for something wrong with the hieroglyphs or with the lines that she already knew like the back of her hand and calling out to Bill the runes and hieroglyphs so he could check with the written ones.
"Do you think the cage disrupted the magic? Maybe the magic we cast on it affected the natural flow of magic from the ritual…" Hermione mussed out loud once she had finished circling the whole diagram and Bill hummed.
"It could be that, it could be..." he muttered, comparing his perfect –and several times already checked- notes with the old papyrus, perhaps he had made a mistake somewhere and copied wrong the order of the hieroglyphs and then passed that mistake on to the real ritual circle drawn on the floor.
"Let me out of here" Riddle hissed, tired of their mussing when he couldn't understand what they were talking about, what the hell were they talking about? Could magic really be disrupted? And what was the natural flow of magic? Why had he never heard of such things? Why did they know about it when they didn't look old enough to have mastered any subject?
"Shut up, Riddle" the red-headed snapped.
"Let me out!" the teen screamed this time and he would have been silenced had they not been so magically depleted.
"I cannot find anything here, Bill" Hermione said after walking twice more around the circle.
"I want to go! Open this thing!" Tom kept shouting.
"Me neither, but that may be because of the nuisance, or maybe because my massive headache, I'm not sure" he said dryly, raising a brow at her.
The younger woman glared at him and then turned to look at Harry. "We should take him to your apartment; lay him down somewhere more comfortable."
"And sleep, we need to sleep" Bill agreed.
"Wait! You can't just leave me here!" teenage Riddle screamed, trying to shake the bars or move ones that were part of the door, utterly failing at it.
Bill smirked evilly –and more than a bit smug- at him, "Oh, yes, we can" he said and then moved to help Hermione lift the dead weight that was their other friend to the other room where a portkey that would take them to his apartment was waiting for them.
The man couldn't help but thank to every god he could remember that his other-self had chosen the same one.
Harry awoke to a really dark and quiet apartment, Bill's, he was sure.
It took him a while to order his memories since they kept coming at him –almost relentlessly attacking his mind- not letting him think clearly.
When he found his mind to be somewhat tranquil again, surprise overtook him.
He had known that his life would have been different had Voldemort not killed his parents, but this… the life his other-self had lived… it just left him speechless. And that wasn't a problem he was used to encounter.
His other-self had his own personality traits, some very different from his and other very similar, but the differences were there and that was what he noticed the most. The never-ending happiness the other Harry had experienced, the freedom from an established destiny, the confidence only caring parents could build, the unconditional support from parents, uncles and loyal friends.
He had basically killed the other Harry and took his place, memory merge aside, and he wasn't sure he would be able to adapt to the position he was taking. There were so many differences it wasn't even worth it to try.
"I knew I should have said no" he muttered, throwing one arm over his eyes and wondering if he wouldn't feel too much guilt if he decided to run away from England.
And he hadn't thought about Riddle yet.
"Oh, shit!" Harry sat straight suddenly, where was Riddle?
Harry quickly got up, thinking about Bill's murderous inclination towards Riddle, and checked the whole apartment for any sign of the man they had summoned. Was it even a man what they had summoned? Maybe it was just a little kid, the ritual was supposed to take Riddle from his timeline in a moment when he was still innocent and he doubted the man could have had any innocence on him after his eleventh birthday.
His search only led his to Bill's occupied bedroom, where Hermione was sleeping in the man's bed while the older man was just as sleep on a conjured mattress since Harry had taken the couch-turned-queen-size-bed that was on the living room.
Trying to make as little noise as possible he exited the room and went to the kitchen, where he made something for him and his friends just in case they woke up hungry.
It was as he was enjoying his first peaceful lunch in weeks that he started thinking about Riddle again. Had anyone thought about feeding him? He hadn't found him in the apartment; did that mean he was still on the cage? How long had he been there?
Taking his wand from the hostler on his arm he casted a quiet tempus that told him something he already suspected, two days had passed since the ritual.
And since he had only woke up now and Hermione and Bill were still sleeping that meant that they had been unconscious for part of the first day, if not the whole first day, before his friends woke up and took him to Bill's apartment.
Obviously, that meant nobody had feed Tom Riddle in two whole days since they brought him to the present, that is, if the man, kid, whatever, was still alive and Bill hadn't killed him as soon as he had woken up.
"Well, that just won't do" he said tiredly, putting some food on a plate, grabbing a knife, a fork and a glass he filled with pumpkin juice. He left the tray over the table and then, after a little muttered spell that would prevent everything from falling over, Harry appeared to the ritual cavern.
Just as he had thought, there was Riddle, who looked as if he was starving but was trying to ignore that in favor of looking for some way to escape the little prison.
What surprised Harry, though, was the age. Riddle didn't look as if he had one single innocent hair in his head.
"Let me… " the boy coughed, his throat so dry it hurt him to even swallow "out of he-here" he coughed again and Harry couldn't help to feel guilt. Then the boy lifted his head and realized he was the only one he hadn't spoken to, the one who apparently had too many changes in his life to accept it, whatever that meant.
Harry shook his head at this. "I'm sorry, but I cannot let you go until we decide what we are going to do with you." Harry informed the teen, who glowered at this "I can, however, give you something to eat" he offered and pointing his wand at the inside of the cage he shot a spell that made the tray appear there from Bill's kitchen, the same nifty spell he used on his notebook and pen to be able to have it at hand at all times.
Notebook and pen that he had never bought in this altered reality; if his memories served right when he had finally decided to move from his parents' house he had rented an apartment with Ron in London, close to the Ministry, so in this reality he didn't even have his own apartment, nor all the things he had gone through so many pains to obtain, his books, papyrus, old Celt documents.
"Shite…" escaped his lips when he realized that all the work he had done in the last seven years was gone, didn't exist, hadn't even been thought of by the other Harry, not even in his wildest dreams. He raised one hand to rub at his tired eyes and ruffle his hair a bit, he was still too tired to deal with so many changes… he frowned and brought his other hand to his hair when he noticed that even that was different, he had never let his hair grow so long before… and he didn't have his glasses on, he hadn't noticed before because he could see everything just as well as he did with his glasses on, but they weren't on his face.
A distant memory of going to an appointment at San Mungo's with his mother to get his eyes fixed magically came to his mind, followed by a weary sigh as he let down his hands again, leaving his hair and lack of glasses alone for the moment.
He raised his eyes to look at a suspicious Tom Riddle who was looking from his food to him and then to his food again.
"It's not poisoned, I promised" Harry tried to sound as sincere as he could while feeling so disoriented with himself and everything that was going on.
"Why should I believe you?" asked Tom crossing his arms in front of his chest and raising an eyebrow in a show of defiance and wariness, even though he was dying to eat everything that was on that tray and ask for more if he could, because that meager amount of food wouldn't fill his stomach after two days without food.
Sighing yet again Harry walked to the cage and sat down as close as he could to the tray and Tom. "If I try a bit of everything that is on the tray, will you eat it?" he asked looking up at Tom's frowning face.
The teen had a moment of hesitation; however it seemed that his hunger had weighted him down enough in the last two days for him to agree with a minimum amount of suspicion and reticence in a shorter period of time than Harry would've expected.
Tom sat on the other side of the tray and waited for Harry to try a bit of something before he grabbed that and ate it.
"Why are you doing all this?" asked the teen in between bites, his eyes fixed on Harry as he waited for an answer that he didn't actually expect to come, taking into account the refusal of the other two to answer him.
Harry looked up from the tray where he had been about to grab the glass of pumpkin juice, it wasn't such an unexpected question, in fact It's the same he would be asking should their roles be reversed, he didn't expect, however, to feel a slight proving on his mind as soon as his eyes met Tom's.
While it was amazing that a thirteen year old had already dabbled with the mind arts, Harry wasn't really eager to let the kid know everything he did now, so he quickly tore his eyes away and try to put up as many of his mental barriers as he could –not many, occlumancy wasn't an art he had taken any interest in-.
"You know about legilimancy" said Tom after a couple of minutes of silence, in which Harry had tried to fortify his mind as much as he could with his awful abilities on the subject and his tiredness.
As pissed off as Tom was with the whole situation he also had to admit that he had never met anyone, outside some of his teachers at Hogwarts, who seemed as fascinating and intelligent as the three who had kidnapped him, and even then he had never even heard one of his teachers say anything about the natural flow of magic and a possible disruption of it, that was the kind of knowledge he had tried to harness while studying at Hogwarts but there weren't any advanced magic theory books in the library, not even in the restricted section. These people looked young, younger than all his teachers, and yet they spoke of complex magical theories and were able to at least spot the use of the mind arts. They also seemed to have kidnapped him through a very complicated ritual that involved hieroglyphs, runes and who knows what else… and let's not forget about the cage he was in that somehow blocked his magic. One magical feat after another. They must be prodigies, just like himself, or at the very least very intelligent and resourceful people.
"I do know about it, however I'm not capable of it, I decided against studying it," said Harry, staring at Tom in the eye, sure that he would be able to feel and even perhaps repel another intrusion to his mind. "I refuse to violate another person's privacy just to satisfy my curiosity"
"But you have to admit, it is quite useful" retorted Tom, quite curious as to why someone would reject such a valuable skill, specially someone as powerful and clever as this wizard in front of him seemed to be, he had to realize the benefits of the mind arts. Tom's face was still set on a frown; yet his eyes seemed to be gleaming with a light Harry hadn't noticed on them before.
"There are other ways to find out the truth, should it be needed, that do not meddle with people's minds. Veritarserum, for instance" countered Harry, placing the pumpkin juice once more in the tray after taking a sip of it, leaning back and holding his weight on his hands, it had been quite a while since he had last had to sit on the floor and he had forgotten it was quite uncomfortable.
"Veritaserum… liquid truth. I was not aware of the existence of that kind if potion" Tom's face smothered his frown as impassiveness took its place, he was quite sure that there was no such potion, he would have heard of it before, he would have already got it, just in case he needed it, he was a slytherin after all, it's always better to be prepared than sorry.
"You wouldn't, I don't think it was invented until 1950, at the very least" Harry answered, enjoying perhaps too much the slight widening of Tom's eyes and the minute twitch on his jaw, surely stopping his mouth from opening to show his surprise.
The teen's eyes narrowed as he stared at the adult in front of him. There was absolutely no way that man was implying what he thought he was implying, such a thing wasn't possible, or at least shouldn't be possible, and yet as he took into the other wizard's clothes and remembered the other wizard's and witch's weird clothes and mannerisms –a respectable witch would have never acted the way that woman had and yet the man hadn't thought there was anything wrong about it-.
"Prove it" defied Tom, half expecting the other wizard to admit that it was all a very screwed up joke, and half hoping that the man was telling the truth. It would be such a wonderful thing, to suddenly wake up in the future, where lots of advances had already been made, numerous new theories and spells must have been discovered or created… if one were to ignore that he was waiting for the answer sitting inside of a magical suppressing cage in the middle of Merlin knows where. Kind of difficult thing to ignore, from where he was sitting.
"Sure" Harry took out his wand, shifting his posture to hold his weight with one hand, and waved the piece of wood "Tempus."
'January 26, 2006, 10am.' The words formed in the air, floating in front of Tom's blank face.
Hello!
Sorry for the delay... college was a b*tch this year, an absolute, vindictive b*tch, the one who lied to me and told me that computer engineering wasn't as difficult as everyone said it was... nevermind -.-'
So... just so you know, I don't like this chapter. Everytime I read it I feel like I was really sleep deprived and drinking too much coffee when I wrote all this, but I can't find anything to change that will stop making me feel that way (maybe because I know I was sleep deprived and on my third cup of cappuccino when I wrote most of this chapter). However, since I refuse to erase the whole chapter to write something that makes more sense, this is the chapter you get, because this is the chapter Fanfiction deserves, but not the one it needs right now (I'm still sleep deprived and drinking too much coffee, two weeks later, in case you didn't notice).
I hope you enjoyed it!
R&R, please n.n
See ya,
Kar